The North Light Plant plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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74° on Nov. 12, 1967, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 74° in 1973.
North Light Plant’s center stands about 5,890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,640 ft to 6,270 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tank Mountain, about 7,190 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Nacimiento Formation (sandstone, shale, conglomerate), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale, conglomerate. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, shale. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Andesite, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in North Light Plant reaches the Gulf of California by way of Estes Arroyo, the Animas, the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,130 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of North Light Plant; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
North Light Plant has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 11 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 North Light Plant normally reaches 58° and falls to 26°. The record high is 73°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 0.73 in, fell in 1910.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Aztec Ruins Natl Monument, 3 miles southeast, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
